MY SHORT-EARED OWLS.
WITH the best will in the world towards spring announcements about early birds and butterflies, some of us cannot be reconciled to the statement in print, year after year—it has certainly been going on since the 'eighties—that (1) the first cuckoo has just been heard, or seen, in March ; (2) the first sulphur butterfly came out of its chrysalid a month or so earlier.
Now, the cuckoo never reaches England in March. Does this sound dogmatic ? Well, dogma would not be absent, I suppose, from the statement if we removed the word " cuckoo " and put in its stead " bird of paradise." Nor does the sulphur in this country ever hatch out in a wild state in February—if, indeed, ever in March. The sulphur appears on the wing in February, often enough in January ; but that is another story. The sulphur hatching from its chrysalid at that season is almost as unimaginable as would be, say, the cuckoo in January or February laying her egg in the nest of pipit or wagtail ; though, so far, this latter occurrence has not been reported in print. Even the earliest cuckoo draws the line there I As to our ordinary cuckoo, it might be interesting to have some authentic facts about its arrival in Continental countries to which it is a spring and summer visitor only. Presumably, in some at least of these, the cuckoo is a March guest. The writer's observations as to the early cuckoo abroad amount to nothing. He has missed the bird early in April in Sicily, and looked and listened for it vainly in February and March among the Atlas Mountains and in Tunisia. However, as the Atlas Moun- tains in February and March are something like England in May, very likely it was there with the swallows. One of the reasons why we cannot all reconcile our- selves to the March cuckoo here and the imago of the sulphur fresh from its chrysalid in February is they invite so much controversy and spade that other actual arrivals and events tend to be overlooked. Let me give an example of this. I have seen several of the usual March cuckoo announcements, but not a solitary reference to the fact that the short-eared owl has been extraordinarily abundant during the winter and early spring this year in at least some districts in the South of England. This bird is not well known in the south. We know the barn and tawny owls well. We are familiar, too, though not so familiar, with the long-eared owl, whilst of recent years the little owl has ceased to surprise us. But, in the south, the short-eared owl remains, more or less, a rarity. Found nesting on, say, a Wiltshire or Hampshire common, high on the chalk or low in a marshy river waste, the short-eared owl is an occurrence to us Southerners, an event. The species, then, is well worth -print--though it is not good to localize the nesting site exactly.
In 1912 I found the short-eared owl rearing its young on one of our high and dry commons in the south within about 60 miles of London, and knew that, a few years before, the species had been nesting in a marsh some six or seven miles away. Since then I have found the bird in April on another common, neither very wet nor very dry, about 40 miles south-west of London. Still, this remains, in the nesting part of spring and in the summer, a scarce bird in the south.
In February and March this year I spent a week or so in a district where the short-eared owl had been hawking, . after his habit, in broad daylight, through the spring and burning summer of 1921. I supposed at first this owl was then nesting on the common, for it seemed to object when I came too near, hovered in the air fifty yards or thereabouts from me, faced me in an indignant manner and cried out against my presence, though I was only trying with my dry fly to find just one rising trout. However, a nest implies a mate, and, as the mate never appeared, I believed my friend must be unwedded.
Revisiting the scene in early March this year—hoping against reasonable hope to find the earliest chiff-chaff or the earliest red-shank then—I at once met with a short- eared owl. ” The same bird," I said to myself. After a few minutes, a second short-eared owl appeared. " A mate all right this year," I concluded ; and went home wondering whether I should be able to find the nest in May or June.
Next day, I noticed a short-eared owl about a mile away from this spot. This looked as if the bird may roam a good deal in search of prey. Later, I returned to the common. At once I found two short-eared owls hawking. I began to think there might be three in the district. Whilst I was considering this, a third actually appeared on the wing. So three assuredly there were— for I was able to count them all on the wing at the same time within lees than half a mile of one another. I had no sooner satisfied myself of this than a wing flash in the distance told me there might even be a fourth—to say nothing of the bird seen the day before a mile away in a pasture field making a possible fifth. And, a minute or so later, I was watching four short-eared owls a-wing and hawking for food on the common. When, shortly afterwards, I related this experience to a gamekeeper, he was not impressed at all. " Why," he exclaimed, " there's dozens and dozens of them. They've been here all the winter." He added they were not to be shot ; and, rightly or wrongly, I took some credit for this, for I had pleaded for my friend of 1921. (A bittern just off the common knew another fate, alas ! during the winter.) Was the man grossly exaggerating ? I was pondering over this when driving to the station on my return home : suddenly a short-eared owl appeared at a new spot, and the driver of the pony trap (pony traps are better for bird lovers, ten thousand tunes better, than motor-cars) remarked to me casually, " Nothing but them owls about here this winter !- there's been a regular invasion of them." Was the gamekeeper's dozens and dozens so wide of the mark, after all ?
I may be told it was a purely local invasion. But I should doubt that for several reasons. One reason for such doubt would be that at Easter 'when I was driving— this time in a costly motor-car, there being nothing better and cheaper to be hired—to a spot where there are trout, I caught sight of a short-eared owl hawking by the bank of a disused canal close to a busy town. This could scarcely have been one of my four to six owls, or of the keeper's dozens and dozens, or of the pony-trap driver's " nothing but them owls about here "—unless it had roamed twenty miles or so in search of food. No, the fact is there has been an invasion—a benign invasion— of southern districts during the past winter and the present spring by this beautiful bird of the broad day- light ; and I suppose we shall hear more about it presently. The short-eared owl is worth hearing more about. It is gloriously worth seeing whilst it is hawking for food over the common or marsh. See it flashing in the sunshine ; sweeping ; soaring ; shooting hither, thither ; apparently at random, yet so infinitely far from random in tl ose movements of consummate grace and skill ! We are learning to fly. It will, however, take us a million years to be as expert on the wing as a short-eared owl, let alone a hobby or a sparrow-hawk. But after my experience of last summer the ordinary flight of the bird is not enough for me. I want to go out after the may-fly has come and gone and one can think of other things than the possible three-pound trout in the right mood. I want that short-eared owl to come and, bizarre but very beautiful, poise almost over me, stationary for some wondrous seconds, and to hold forth. That is one of our exquisite momenta on the common.
D.
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